College graduates get more relief on loan payments

Source: Kansas City Star

One month after graduating from Avila University this June with a master’s degree in business administration, Andy Fogel received his first statement detailing payments due on his $38,000 student loan.

The bill: $380 a month for 10 years.

Fogel can’t afford that unless he limits his meals to a college diet of ramen noodles every night. No thanks.

“There would be nothing left for unexpected situations,” said Fogel, who works in the financial aid office at Kansas State University. “With everything else, I just couldn’t afford to make those payments.”

5. Indentured Servitude, v. 2.0 - n/t

2. This is a start

but these large student loan balances are not only hurting our young people right out of college, they are hurting people in their 30's and 40's. If a student pursued a post graduate degree in order to teach or do research at a University they could come out with over $100000 in debt, they may have put them in forbearance while in grad school and then they began paying them off at age 28, or later depending on when they finish. 20 years out is 48 years of age.

Some of us didn't get the best interest rate when we refinanced (ours is 8 percent). Our payment is like a really good house payment with today's rates. Throw in elderly parents, illness, or spousal job loss and this can ruin someone.

I think many of the young people who are borrowing are not using the best judgment, not that we did either, but both of us worked while in college so we didn't have to borrow the max. In working with some students, I have seen them driving better cars than I have, wearing designer clothes, etc. Not all but certainly some of them do.

All of us with student loan debt need help, not just the young ones.... I think if someone is teaching at any level they should get some relief.

4. Look into "Public Service Loan Forgivness"

It's a fairly new and amazingly unknown program through the department of education. If you teach....in fact, if you work full-time in any capacity at a public or private school, or at ANY non-profit, and you make regular payments for ten years, the balance of your loan is discharged. (I mean, it only makes sense if you're to be paying your loans off for 20 years or more, but...) it can also be combined with income-based repayment plans, and is grandfathered back to 2007, if you've been paying since then.

would only take me on per diem and treated me, quite frankly, like shit from day 1. Now they are cutting back like crazy, which hit me first and foremost. 14% annual growth in healthcare is a big fat lie.

Luckily the (totally for profit) job I worked at while in school (putting in 18 hour days, graduated summa cum laude) hired me back part time. The reason they could hire me is because they have a turnover of 40% (that job is that shitty, but at least it's shit I have some control over and less shitty than the lab). I'm hoping to change the new part time job to full time by next year if not sooner. The sooner I can tell the lab what they can do with themselves, the better. They've already ruined my "second" career -- the thought of going there makes me nauseous after the unbelievable abuse.

Without income based repayment I would have lost my home. Instead, I may never be able to retire and when the forgiveness/taxes come due I'll be in my 80s and will probably lose my home then if I'm still alive.

25. Have your daughters default on those loans, unless you co-signed

The max the government can collect is 25% of the debtor's income. Since your daughter live at home, there is NOTHING more the Government can take. Furthermore, if they do find work, they MUST be left with at least 30 times the Minimum wage, i.e $225 per week. These are the FEDERAL RESTRICTIONS on wage attachments and these restrictions apply to Student loans.

If you co-signed for the loans, that is a different story, then you can be held liable and could lose your home IF THE GOVERNMENT GOES AFTER THE HOME. Hopefully you did NOT co-sign, for then and only then can the Government TAKE your income and home.

Now, your daughter, if and when they find employment, will probably be subject to an administrative wage attachment (not a Judicial Wage Attachment). This Administrative Wage Attachment is a produce of Congress for Local Federal prosecutors were getting tired of filing Student Loan Complaints. One difference, is wage attachment under the administrative system is 10%.

Just telling you your options as to Student loans, given that they are NOT dischargeable in Bankruptcy EXCEPT if paying them would cause a huge hardship.

46. That's me!

I followed the American dram to three degrees. I now have a permanent position, starting in August. I am a history professor. We do not make 6 figures, as some assume. My loans are $1000/month. Needless to say, I cannot pay this.

18. We live in a sea of information

misinformation and propaganda of all sorts and on all topics. None of which absolves anyone of responsibility for the choices they make freely, even those choices that don't turn out as well as we hoped or planned.

And I utterly reject the notion that any type of dividing line exists between "the 1%" and "the 99%", the crossing of which in either direction alters responsibility for one's choices or the ability to make them wisely.

If an adult individual is not responsible for the life choices they make, including how they manage their money, then who is? The last time I checked, personal responsibility and integrity were still progressive values, and entirely appropriate to be promoted of this board. If you disagree, let's hear it.

23. STRAWMAN AWARD of the WEEK! This is NOT about

"managing money" (except to the right-wing 1%).

This is about a line of decadent capitalist-imperialist propaganda that argues "Get a college degree and take on mountains of debt to finance it because it's a good investment" and the working class' failure to see through the empty bullshit embodied in the pitch. Basically the 1% have conned Americans into thinking they should 1) pay for their own job training to make profits for the 1% and 2) go into non-dischargable debt to finance said job training.

Saying adult individuals should be 'responsible' for the 'choices they make' is empty sloganeering, akin to a politician claiming he or she is 'tough on crime.' (When's the last time you heard a politician tout that he or she is 'soft' on crime?)

37. You forgot to call me an imperialist dog, comrade

But that's ok, since you got everything else wrong too.

As already noted, everyone gets hit with lots of sales pitches, every day, for all sorts of things. Do you shell out your money for every single pitch you see or hear? Me neither. Part of managing your money and your life is exactly about looking at all that propaganda and asking yourself "do I really need that, and can I really afford it?" I completely reject the notion (which you obviously endorse) that having a paycheck below a certain level or doing a certain kind of work makes you more foolish, more reckless or more gullible about such things.

And saying that the concept of personal responsibility is just "empty sloganeering"? Wow. Just wow.

39. You continue to slide and slither around the central question, which is

that the 1% have sold the working class on the idea that it should use post-secondary education as job training and further that it should go into heavy debt to finance said job training.

Given that you clearly side with the 1% and its lackies and lickspittles on this question, I can see that little is to be gained from any further exchanges with you. I really do think you might want to check your attitude and privilege as you carp on 'personal responsibility,' rhetoric which you are really using primarily as a pretext to bash the working class. If you don't support the working class, then one is rightly entitled to ask just what the fuck you are doing here.

OTOH, there are so many lackies and lickspittles of the 1% frequenting these parts lately that it may be I who needs to ask what the fuck I am still doing here.

43. You and your ilk here are the ones bashing the working class

Doubling down on the notion that they're too stupid and too gullible to make common-sense decisions about their lives in the face of advertising and sales pitches that you don't seem to have a problem seeing through. A notion that I've continued to reject.

44. First you won Strawman of the Week Award, and now you have won

the award for Specious Logic of the Week.

To wit, by your logic, there is no need whatsoever even for laws against predatory lending since, by your way of thinking, such laws would double down on the notion that the working class are too stupid and too gullible to make common-sense decisions about their lives.

Maybe there's an AynRandUnderground.com somewhere on the net, but this ain't it.

15. As often as not there isn't much of a choice

This isn't the 1950s anymore; people can't segue smoothly into home ownership a few years after graduating from high school anymore, and even most low-yield jobs out there "require" a college degree as a result of high school diplomas being so watered down anymore. (Also, the whole fad of requiring one for its own sake.)

The question isn't "can I afford this loan?" in this market, it's "can I afford to spend the next ten years bouncing from one minimum wage job to another until I get a lucky break somewhere?" and with things the way they are the answer to that has never been further from "no" than it is.

"Just pick up a trade" isn't becoming any easier these days either, before that riposte shows up.

On top of that, tuition tends to skyrocket over the course of a degree. Someone's last year being half again as expensive as their first year is not unusual. It's entirely possible to believe you can afford it when you start only to have another $20,000 on the bill by the end that you weren't anticipating because an institution decided to raise their rates to build that third new business school or something.

20. The question is

"Is this education likely to be worth more than what it's going to cost me, in the long run?" If the answer is no, then taking on tens or hundreds of thousand of dollars in debt is simply foolish, regardless of what type of job you'll have without it. If the answer is yes, then the question is how much short term sacrifice are you willing to make for long-term benefit?

And skyrocketing tuition shouldn't be a surprise to anyone in this day and age, or something they didn't plan for from day 1 of college or before. But far too many people go all in for the most prestigious and expensive education they can get admitted to, and tell themselves they'll worry about paying for it later.

22. Many career fields tanked with the economy. Its not a student's fault if they did due diligence

research only to discover upon graduation that their "sure fire" career disappeared in the time it took them to earn their degree. Any career in construction went up in smoke between 2008 - 2010. What happened if you graduated during those years with even a STEM degree like civil engineering degree, architecture, drafting, or mechanical engineering? You cannot find a job AND you have many thousands of dollars of debt. Even some medical fields that were touted as "sure fire" like med techs or phlebotomists - crashed. Many radiologists are actually located in Mumbai which means US trained med staff is SOL. Or teaching - double zero if you graduated and tried to find a job.

Computer science guys have horror stories of the increase in H1B visa holders destroying their careers from 2006 onwards. What are they supposed to do with their loans now?

Lawyers are getting laid off, paralegal work is being outsourced to India.

You can do all the homework in the world but the reality is that in the past few years, those who did their homework and believed they were in a "sure fire" or "high growth rate" career track are suddenly unleashed into a very, very different economy than when they started. Universities have a vested interest in lying to their students about their job placement rates so the student can go into student services worried about their future employability and be assured by the university that they'll be placed.

However to a university it doesn't matter exactly how you got "placed". If you have a civil engineering degree and are flipping burgers at Wendy's for minimum wage, the university doesn't indicate that. They simply tout their stats that "100% of their 2011 graduating class was employed within a year!!1111!!!"

Universities are in the midst of a flurry of lawsuits because of post grad employ-ability statistics fraud.

19. If you're saying it would be nice and beneficial

if even lower income students in the US could have some type of college education paid for, I don't disagree, but that's not the country we live in, and the people diving into an education that they should know they can't afford are aware of that going in.

29. oh, what nonsense - both this and your posts below

It is extremely difficult not to think that you don't know exactly what a crock you are posting. Even in this post - you surely cannot be unaware that people are told that their only route even getting any job that has the possibility of allowing them a decent life is to get a college degree? And you surely cannot be unaware of what's happened to college tuition over the past few decades? And are you really unaware that tuition loans - particularly for the private so-called "colleges" which are really just rip-off scams gouging the disadvantaged and desperate - have become just another honeypot for our Corporate Overlords?

Once again, the "personal responsibility" mantra is a distraction from the real issues - which are systemic.

41. Were you planning on addressing ANY of the points I made

or are you just going to keep spouting the same lines?

Do I have to keep repeating, YES, I KNOW people are told they need all sort of things, EVERY FUCKING DAY. It's called ADVERTISING. Do you believe EVERY FUCKING THING you're told?? Do you go out and spend money on EVERY FUCKING THING you're told you need?? Why are all of these "people" you're talking about totally incapable of exercising the same judgement you are?? If that's such a line of bullshit, then they should be able to look around at the people they know and encounter every day and see plenty of them who have decent jobs with NO college degree, and plenty of them who have a worthless college degree and massive debt, and make a WISE decision for themselves based on that.

And yes, I know perfectly well what's happened to college tuition, and all about tuition loan scams. Are you saying these "people" you keep referring to are clueless and ignorant about that, and can't be expected to know any different? If people are being flat out lied to, that's another matter, but that's not what we're talking about, are we? The person in the OP article knew exactly what their repayment terms would be when they took all that money. No one held a gun to their head, and no one but them had the final decision on whether it was wise or not.

32. I agree SS

People gamble and then get bitter when the bet doesn't pay out like they hoped/expected. "If I take on X amount of debt, its OK because I can pay off in the long run because I'll be earning more." They do this without taking the time to crunch the numbers. Even those who DO crunch the numbers are basing the gamble on assumptions. "I can pay X amount of loan back in Y years if I make Z salary." Its a gamble pure and simple.

9. What did congress do

exactly? I have been paying on my daughters student loan for 11 years now and have it down to around $14k. This does not include the 10k loan she pays each month. We are indebted for the rest of our live I feel. The local city college has announced in the past few days that any student in arrears will not be allowed back in class until their loans are current. The college acted as if they could care less when the announce was made on local TV.

14. Is this payment tax deductible?

21. The interest is but you get back a pittance

The amount you can deduct is $2500/yr and then you only get back the tax from that amount which is a couple of hundred dollars for most people. Mine has been on Income Based Repayment for the over a year since I ran out of deferments. Now the interest will start capitalizing and the principal gets even bigger. I've come to the realization I'm never going to pay mine back and look forward to having them garnish the pittance of Social Security I will get (If I live long enough to qualify for it).

33. Who knows what the future brings?Perhaps all these VOTING CHILDREN and PARENTS and

GRANDPARENTS ....may vote for a government bailout on all student loans .....
Why would they Vote for such bailout
Why vote for Chrysler GM or AIG and Banks?
it is to prevent a DEPRESSION of ENORMOUS side effects
that was the reason for those bailouts

because it will prevent poverty and placing people on Medicaid Food stamps and having them boarded in prison
they deduct it from your social security puts you into poverty status which results in eligibility for welfare
its a vicious circle
of which the Republicans want to get rid of all safety nets .....social security medicare medicaid food stamps

but they will pay for prisons but even that is getting costly
No police No firemen No healthcare.....Do they know what they are asking?

Placing people into poverty trust me will cost the government much more than the student loans

we can spend 666 Billion dollars fighting wars but not educate our children of which Congress says we need educated workers
It is a question do we still want to remain a Superpower because other countries will be glad to have our educated workers
work for them ....

I think we can save many from poverty if we gave these kids a bailout and boost up a economy on the skids